In the midst of emergency declarations announced for Michigan poultry and dairy farmers, and the appalling show of grotesque privilege displayed at this year’s Met Gala and the empty theatrical hopium stirred up on social media via Phlip Kruse’s cease and desist letter to the WHO, the Drug Enforcement Agency has announced today is Fentanyl Awareness Day.
I had no idea such a day existed and was even more surprised to see that the DEA had dedicated a memorial wall to Fentanyl victims. It’s hardly the tourist-luring, breathtaking 9/11 Memorial Museum, but at least there’s something to memorialize the victims.
The first officially recognized Fentanyl Awareness Day started in August, 2022 and it seemed in the year that followed some Governors were working diligently to get the word out about the dangerous rise of fentanyl deaths that go largely ignored especially in the media.
On the DEA’s landing page, Anne Milgram, Sworn Administrator of the DEA leads a compelling but brief message about the dangers of the now-pervasive street drug that has captured so many lives, young and old alike.
It’s important to note the difference, though, between the highly toxic street drug labeled fentanyl, clandestinely made for street distribution and the fentanyl prescribed by doctors for patients in critical care needing pain management.
Street fentanyl may have trace amounts of methamphetamines, or cocaine or opioids and what makes it clandestine is no one really knows what fillers are used to fill out the drug which is typically sold in pill form. It’s some kind of poison to be sure. It seems addicts who become dependent on street fentanyl are unknowingly poisoning themselves to death.
Prescribed fentanyl is managed by a healthcare facility and monitored closely and is a potent synthetic opioid drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use as an analgesic (pain relief) and anesthetic. It is approximately 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin as an analgesic. Fentanyl was first developed in 1959 and introduced in the 1960s as an intravenous anesthetic. It is legally manufactured and distributed in the United States to treat cancer patients and patients under severe pain management monitoring.
Although both the street fentanyl and prescribed fentanyl are highly addictive, it’s the former that has caused a shocking rise in death over the last few years and shows no signs of slowing down.
Having lived in San Francisco for most of my life and seeing first-hand the devastating and dehumanizing effects this street drug has on the population, it’s alarming for me to hear that fentanyl has now affected every corner of the United States.
Yet the media remains indifferent and almost all health organizations remain abysmally silent on this epidemic. The only real coverage of the deadly fentanyl crisis is being recorded diligently by individuals on social media who live with it in their neighborhoods day in and day out. For instance, a few San Franciscans are using their iPhones and Twitter accounts on the X platform to tweet out the truth of the situation: https://twitter.com/dbofsf, https://twitter.com/bettersoma, https://twitter.com/war24182236, https://twitter.com/darren_stallcup, https://twitter.com/SFDamnPodcast, https://twitter.com/friscolive415
And last year That’sFentalife launched a colorful, cheeky shaming campaign against San Francisco’s leadership for actually adding to the fentanyl deaths by funding a controversial method called Harm Reduction. Harm Reduction provides drugs, syringes and even housing for addicts to continue their addiction practices without offering any real solutions, like rehab for instance.
It seemed as though after the National Emergency for Covid Response was declared on March 13, 2020 and ongoing language around the virus and vaccine treatment in years after continued to gain momentum, many in the “That’sFentalife” crowd were insinuating that these emergency orders and viral virus-related social media messaging seemed to suck all the energy out of the room and were used as cover for the actual deadly epidemic that had infiltrated our nation somehow.
No one seems to be talking about the fentanyl deaths in any real way.
It is also strange to me that when I mention the fentanyl crisis in general over the years, many people referred to Portland and Seattle as the epicenters of the epidemic and when I mention that it’s actually San Francisco, they seem surprised.
But at least in 2022 it was the City of San Francisco that outpaced the entire nation when it came to drug overdose deaths. Who is influencing individuals to ignore these alarming statistics coming out of San Francisco? What purpose does it serve to ignore these statistics?
After all there were over 800 overdose deaths in San Francisco in 2023 alone and I can almost guarantee the majority of those deaths, if not all, were street Fentanyl poisonings.
The resources in San Francisco, for instance, seem to be misdirected. More funding and support is given to keep the addiction going than there are resources available to help the victims of this crisis. I imagine the lack of resources to combat or even address this real epidemic is throughout the nation and yet again, it’s not something you really see covered in the news, instead they’ll talk around or insinuate the issue, without ever pointing to it directly.
Despite the on-the-ground understanding that Harm Reduction policy is actually causing more fentanyl deaths and creating a widespread epidemic throughout the country, the Rockefeller Institute states the policy actually decreases fentanyl related deaths.
This is a lie.
But, I can see why the Rockefeller Institute would push for harm reduction. It is currently a $131 million industry that doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Harm reduction also accounts for over $100 billion in global law enforcement funding. That’s about $100,131,000,000.00 (One hundred billion, one hundred thirty one million dollars) in distributed paychecks, expense accounts, travel costs and various other programs and non-profits that will benefit from the crisis that just won’t seem to go away.
Compare this to the DEA’s budget
It’s no wonder the “Faces of Fentanyl” on the DEA’s wall seems so ramshackle and cheaply displayed. All the money seems to be going to individuals who benefit from the crisis.
The street fentanyl addiction is a different kind of addiction. It outpaces all other types of drug addiction and is like nothing we’ve seen before. Individuals who find themselves on the street for whatever reason, without proper shelter, are the most vulnerable to this addiction. Those who distribute the illicit drug will often sell it as something else altogether, maybe claiming it’s heroin or uppers. The value of the pills that are sold can sell for as low as $.40. With such a low cost, it’s clear the dealers aren’t making any money pushing them onto the public. So, how are they even benefitting?
Street fentanyl has now taken more lives in just a few short years than the lives taken in the duration of the AIDS epidemic. Fentanyl deaths affect wealthy homes, impoverished communities, healthy individuals with no history of mental illness and the mentally ill. It doesn’t seem to have a specific demographic or even age bracket that it targets.
Did you know today was National Fentanyl Awareness Day? You didn’t? I’m starting to see why.
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